


Left Behind

by Corny_Tyrannosaurus



Category: Gravity Falls, MonsterVerse - Fandom
Genre: Apocalyptic, Consanguinamory, Drama, Family Drama, Gen, Modern Doctor Who References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21664387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corny_Tyrannosaurus/pseuds/Corny_Tyrannosaurus
Summary: Someone was left behind, and the world will pay for it. It will be too late to make amends with past and restore the lost love before the end?
Relationships: Dipper Pines/Mabel Pines
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. The Road

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Crib Robber](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21529750) by [Jengis_Morrangis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jengis_Morrangis/pseuds/Jengis_Morrangis). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lonely being seeks for home. No matter what, no matter why, no matter who. Not even if you're a little girl, or an cosmic beast from farther than the eye can see...

_Hurts._

_It hurts._

_Every moment we are here, every moment this feeling is getting more unbearable. Something pushes us constantly downwards, something fills our snouts constantly with senseless winds; something is not allowing us to go back. We cover ourselves with clouds and thunder the most we can, but we cannot deny the facts anymore: we are not in home anymore._

_How we came here we cannot know; how we can go back we can barely have the hope._

_Why are we here, away from our brothers and sisters? Which odds we have to deal with to return for once to our home?_

_There’s only a hope for our soul to return, and is use our strong wings to feed the storm. So that is what we are going to do. Flap, until our forces let us, until we cannot do it anymore; we will make our storm grow, until we get the enough force to go back home, to out dear, endless heaven. And to open the Gates of Heaven, we will tear the skies apart._

_-_

_Oh right, just 50 miles more until reach New Jersey._

Cassie walked at the left side of a huge, forested highway. The rhythmic steps of her Ductective tennis, hitting the endless gravel, made her think in a song she used to hear, a very long time ago. Her backpack made little stomps over her back with every step she made, reflecting perfectly her enthusiasm with what she considered a great adventure. Every often her glasses got moisty by the heat of her head, and she had to stop her march, put them off, and clean them with the borders of her purple sweater, to just after keep walking with unsaid happiness.

At her sides, the nearby pine trees quivered their points, producing a relaxing hiss she had got used to hear since she reached the state’s sign, a very long distance ago. That had been several days ago, and in all that time she hadn’t spot a single car. She knew why, but she didn’t listen her urges to go back. She had greater urges to go forward.

At one side of the horizon, the sky was flat grey. Every time she felt a little insecure about what she was doing she stared for a moment at that side of the horizon, remembering why she was keeping her walk. And, since she began to walk across the main highway, that became a habit, because from the other side, the direction in which she was walking, the sight was just nightmarish. She wasn’t in any amazing adventure, and the world around her wasn’t promising any hope about future.

Finally, she decided it was time to rest.

She walked towards a fallen trunk, luckily just in front of the highway, and after passing her hand over the place in which she planned to sit, she sat, taking her backpack out of her back and resting it in her lap.

_Finally! Time to eat, I’m starving!_

Merrily, she opened her backpack and took her canteen and her sandwich within a plastic bag. Back in that morning, she had reached a convenience store in the highway. For some amount of violent and unknown events, the store hadn’t been pillaged, and a crashed car had broken through the doors. So the only she had to do was to get in and take what she needed. Cassie still remembered the joy of take a bath for first time in days, and eat hot food without the risk of a fire. The store had its own generator, so all what needed to be refrigerated was still fresh. Before the sandwich she was holding between her hands, there were many others along noodle cups and many, many chocolate bars. She even turned the TV on. She wished to have never done it, but she knew that the news were predictable insecurities she had to handle.

Back into her present sandwich, some of said insecurities went back.

_I wonder how Mom’s doing it without me. I bet she’s worried, but… No! You must strong, you’re almost there!”_

She bitted her sandwich, tasting every tiny detail of a taste she was sure was not going to have the glad of prove in a long, long time. With certain grade of truth, that could be one of the last sandwiches on Earth. Nothing wrong for a twelve-years old who had traversed God-knows how much just walking since the bus services stopped of work almost a month ago.

_Damn, I was so close._

With that though in mind, her ambitions were high. More now, that just 50 miles from her destiny, she had dodged a pack of hungry wolves, the police, some military in the way, and a row of wild tornadoes that fenced an every time larger portion of the continent. The placid state of that highway was a fortunate oddity in a moment of the events in which entire cities had been destroyed by the growing storm. And she was idiotically close to its very eye. Last time she saw the news, the edge of the global cyclone was considerably close to her mother’s actual state. Where it was now, she had no way to know.

_I hope Mom’s fine… Of course she is! What are you thinking?! When I go back with him, she will be happier than ever!… unless he is still on home._

Now was a crucial moment in her daily routine. She took a folded paper from her backpack, and read it. It was delivered two months ago, but she was still holding in her heart the hope of it to be the enough recent to trust it.

Its words returned her some of her lost courage, and she sighed. She was so close; she couldn’t give up.

_You’ll be so happy to see me again._

A sudden thunder distracted her from her thoughts, and for the mere force of the instinct, she made what she avoided most. She saw at the gigantic, spinning cloud in the sky.

She caught the shade over the clouds just for a moment, but that moment remained imprinted in her mind. The enough to make her stomach to hurt and her eyebrows to descend.

_You’re almost there, Cassie. You’re almost there! What if he needs you? What if… He needs help?_

If his letters were to be believed, she knew what lay between the clouds. And she believed in those letters more than ever. She quickly folded the letter, put it back in her backpack, and took her journal, hurrying to draw the most accurate she could, the shape of the shadow she said. It was the first time she glimpsed it.

Her journal was filled with notes and theories about the being, and he had helped a lot. This unbelievable thing had been the topic of several of the letters they sent each other, and it was clear to both, that it, among other supernatural occurrences, were a topic of great passion for both. That… until the letters stopped from coming, a few months ago.

She had to know it, she really had to know it. The strange behavior of her mom around him every time he had come to visit, the silence of her grans every time she asked, the insistence of her father to him to not go back every more often. And, not so long ago, the sudden cease of the cards.

_If I only had knew…_

She had ended the half of her sandwich, when she saw the impossible. From the far, coming from her left side, a red, seemingly damaged car, speeding over the road. Even when the occurrence was something amazing and unexpected, she didn’t lift from the trunk. But then she noticed how the car began to slow down as it got closed to her. An in a sudden movement, it stopped just in front of her. Evidently, whoever was in there, had seen her from a long distance.

This time, the temptation was almost overwhelming.

“Kid are you okay?!” The blonde girl in the passage seat asked with heartbreaking tone, recharging her hands over the borders of the car’s window frame. She was wearing a white shirt stained with blood, something probably explained by the bandage over her head, crossing where her right eye should be. The stain over that place made Cassie acknowledge that behind that bandage there was no eye anymore.

Cassie didn’t answered; she had not talked with anyone in days, so she had nothing in mind to say back. “Babe, hurry up!” The brown haired boy in at the driver seat. He seemed scared, and willing to leave her behind. Now it was the moment to decide.

“Come with us, we can help you!” The blonde girl said, extending her hand out of the car’s window. Then he heard the roar.

“BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRBDBDBDB!!!!”

“Babe, let’s go!” The young man yelled.

“Please come with us! We can save you!” The girl yelled a last time.

Cassie froze, and rolled her eyes towards the left side of the way.

_I can’t leave him. I can’t leave him alone again._

Cassie turned to see her, and moved her head. She had rejected her offer.

The girl gasped in sad despair, and went back to her seat. The car speeded madly, lifting smoke from the tires, and ran away as fast as it came, letting a brief trail of the tires behind it.

Cassie put her half-eaten sandwich back into her backpack along her canteen. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Another thunder, less noisy than the others sounded again, and she saw again at the gigantic cloud. The beast within roared again, a loud and long cry. It sounded almost… sad; as much as she was.

_Could be that be alone as me?_

Her mind drove her to the last months, before to run from home. It was a usual noon back from school; she was watching the news, something about ‘A strange meteor that had fallen in Washington’ when she saw something in the chest of drawers in which the TV was. It looked like a colorful paper, and she didn’t hold her curiosity. For a moment she wished to having hold it, because that moment she had discovered a bunch of letters. A little more gapped the dates in which they were sent, but letters anyway. Those were his letters, and all of them had dates after the day in which supposedly she was told that he didn’t want to know about her anymore. She remembered the rage she felt, and how she threw and ripped apart all on her desk of research she had in her room, all concerning their mutual investigations. She felt so betrayed, so angry, and that moment those feelings were backfiring. She had been cheated by her own parents so blatantly, and soon she was about to know why. She ran to her room, and spent more or less an hour reading letter by letter. The letters’ themes drove slowly apart from their mutual investigation about their ‘GHIDORAH ARCHIVE’ and were beginning to write about how he had been told she didn’t want to talk with him anymore. Letter by letter, she knew about his frustration, his hurt and finally his acceptation, that maybe he wouldn’t be able to see her again. Then she made the math. The angry yelling at phone her father made, and the papers they signed in silence one day they believed she was still asleep. The most heartbreaking detail, was that in no one of the letters he mentioned something against her parents, he always was so… kind. All the opposite to her parents’ case. They had made themselves sure that she hate him as much as they seemed to hate him. That broke her heart that moment. She effectively had hated him so much and so deep, and now she knew she had been so wrong. That moment, she felt like a monster. She waited until her mom came back home, and told her what she found. Then she asked angrily why she had been lied, why they had tried to take them apart. When her mother’s reaction became less like anger and more like regret, she occurred to ask why she had kept the letters; easily she could have destroyed them, but instead she had kept them there, in that dumbly obvious place. Her mother cried, and then she got silent, and then… she told her the truth. And then, in a wave of obvious preparation, she told her the truth about her true intentions. Cassie didn’t bear it anymore. She ran upstairs, and trenched herself inside her room. A couple of hours later, when she began to listen the argument between her parents, she had already decided to go away. A luck she had been taught by him how to climb.

And now, after a pair of months of run, she was almost there, she was almost with _him_.

_I need energy for this. Come on girl! That ham will not last forever!_

Renovated, she took her sandwich and her canteen again, and ate it whole. Then she cleaned her hands with the napkins she had stored in her backpack, put them in the plastic bag she had in there (The end of the world is not excuse to be un-ecological) and looked again at the letter, memorizing the address, the same one he had sworn to stay in no matter what, in case she needed help and had to come there for herself. She smiled warmly, and put it back inside along everything else.

Then she lifted from the trunk, beat her shorts, and looked at the endless storm.

_I’m coming for you, Dad._

With a glance of fierce determination, she continued her walk. Only 50 miles left; it was all she needed.


	2. Stormbringer

\- Washington, D.C. Around three months back; early in the morning…

Darkness. It was all he could feel. His fever was high, and his heart sunken at the bottom of his chest. He had no idea when his soul had gotten so heavy; he didn’t want to know it anymore.

All he could feel was hurt and sorrow, endless quantities of sorrow. His sleepy eyes were conscious of the pain every blinking made him to feel; his eyelashes dried by lonely tears. No hope about the end of his pain was seemed in the green horizons, or hope about his future, or at least a sense for his existence. His hurt, his sadness beyond a right word to describe it. Life was just too much to handle anymore; he was no much more than a body walking without a true purpose, he knew it well. There, recharged over a seat he could not see, prey of the fever, he was glancing at the end of his life…

_I’m sorry so sorry so so sorry please I’m sorry I love you my love I love you I’m so sorry…_

“Sooooo… How was your date?”

Sanjay’s enthusiastic words made Dipper open his eyes wide and recharge himself better over the backseat of the car they were in, his forehead sweaty and his aims heavy. He wasn’t sure if to be awakened from his latest fever dream was a good thing, but at least the moisty feeling over his body distracted him the enough to try to figure an answer.

“Wha – Good, good. All good” Dipper stammered with a dismissive tune as he gave a quickly look at the window; they were near their destiny.

“The usual disaster? –“

“Yeah, the usual disaster” Dipper quickly validated Sanjay’s suspicious as he recharged on the door’s window. Sanjay looked at him thru the back mirror with a stern glance of _‘I told you so’_ he used to make at him, but the growing silence between them made him know it wasn’t the moment, not now. Sanjay glanced back at the road, moving his lips in the pretention to be about to say something. But his eyebrows had already busted him in his worry for Dipper. He knew why the date had failed, why all the previous ones failed, and surely all the possible next ones. Sanjay panted aloud, and looked at him again thru the back mirror. “You know you can talk to me about how you feel, don’t you?”

Dipper kept his eyes on the road, recharging his chin on his hand. “What could say I haven’t said before, Jay?” He dismissed with murmuring voice.

“I dunno. Whatever it helps me to cheer you up a little, at least” Sanjay suggested, turning his attention back to the road. The grass field was at sight, just where they had to go.

“Like why I’m on the back seat while our complex radiation lecture machine is seating comfortably on the copilot seat?” Dipper asked with a brief smile, turning his head to look in front of him.

“Hey, it’s our baby. Don’t talk to him like that” Sanjay said with a wide proud smile; the complex machinery was their latest project, and at least until three months ago both he and Dipper were at their full awe for it. Today, it was the day to test it.

“Well, I hope you had calibrated our baby before to go out, we need the charger to reset it” Dipper appointed.

“Don’t worry Dipper, I prepared everything when you were out. I recalibrated the humidity parameters and used the last 20 years of climatic parameters and the Coriolis influence to discard any interference of the atmosphere. You couldn’t make a more accurate reading of the big rock even if you drill on it” Sanjay expressed with confidence.

“Did you remember the nearby electrical installations and the humidity gradient of the inconvenient bunch of journalists which will gather around? I had time to watch the news” Dipper reassured.

“If you say so, my _journalist_ fellow. All check, Dipdop” Sanjay asserted once more, looking at the reflex of his friend. But he saw how his aim disappeared, and he wasn’t sure if it was for the much bigger crowds of media-related people around the military fence that was now visible, or because something he said. “Dipper?…”

“Yeah –? Nothing, nothing, all good…” Dipper instantly asked with a cracked voice. “F*ck” He coursed; sure that Sanjay had already distinguished his tone.

“Ok. Iiiii’ll guess that was one of the name she used for you and… Look… You know you can trust me with whatever you feel about that, right?” Sanjay reassured as he began to park the car at some free space of the grass field. “it is not like if I was going to judge you about anything or whatever”

“Yeah, I know” Dipper replied, rubbing his eyes with his fingers.

“So… In the moment you want to talk or not talk or cry even when you are still worried about your manliness I’ll be for you, right?” Sanjay said as he turned the car off. “No pressure, no offence. Ok?”

“Yes. Thanks, Jay. You’re one in a million” Dipper replied with a quivering smile and a noisy pant just after. Dipper knew why Sanjay was so caring for him, and in some days, that was the only thing that kept him out of the bed. As far as he knew, Sanjay was the only person left in the world who cared of him.

“Ok then, let’s get this thing out, my friend. We arrived”

Sanjay and Dipper came out of the car, and gave a first sight of the place in which they were, and the magnificent – and slightly frightful – occurrence they had come to study.

Half buried inside the floor, in the middle of a huge grass field near to a residential zone, there was an immense meteorite of about a quarter of mile of size, round and bright-red. A weak, vaporous layer was emitted continuously out of the otherworldly presence and was carried away continuously by the morning breeze, and a crowd of journalists, news people, military and some curious people from the nearby neighborhood had gathered around it at a prudent distance (The most prudent a media-related people could ever be able to be).

Dipper and Sanjay got out of the car, and for a moment they stood still watching the meteorite from the far. It was impossible, and completely frightening.

The meteorite had fallen last night in the middle of one of the greatest storms ever recorded, as much as several electrical lines were still down even now. The calculations didn’t match; if it had that size when it reached the atmosphere, forcefully it had to have burned away in the entry to the atmosphere, and if it had that size when it landed, surely it should have destroyed the entire city when it crashed.

But that didn’t happened.

The meteorite was just there, as big as a warehouse, having only cause a little earthquake when it crashed. Luckily, such impossible phenomena were Dipper’s specialty. Or, at least, that’s what he liked to think. 

“Who takes the device?” Sanjay asked, not looking away from the far meteorite. It was just the kind of things you couldn’t miss a single second.

“Rock, paper and scissors?” Dipper suggested, and both smiled in awe.

That precise moment, both turned each other, extending their hands in the selected shapes. Sanjay had chosen paper, Dipper had chosen rock.

“Dammit” He cursed with disdain.

“Com’ on, it’s not that heavy. Work out a little my wimpy friend” Sanjay said, lifting an eyebrow in playful disbelief.

“Sure, _I_ am the wimpy of us” Dipper replied. Both laughed for a moment, and Dipper opened the car’s door, taking between his arms the heavy silver cylinder. “Oh right, let’s do this” He reassured, closing the door with the device.

Sanjay and Dipper walked a few steps inside the grass field, when they heard a noisy tune coming from the car. Dipper looked at his friend with a dismissive glance, and he smiled nervously.

“Again, Jay?” Dipper asked.

“I can say the same with _soooo_ many of your things, Dipper” Sanjay defended.

“Ok, ok. I’ll keep, you go” Dipper reassured with a friendly smile.

“Thanks a lot” Sanjay exclaimed, and walked back to the car. Dipper looked at him for a moment, to just after turn his attention back to the meteorite. He panted aloud, and resumed his walk.

_Ok, let’s hope this works._

The meteorite was way bigger than he expected. More than once Dipper had to turn around to make himself sure he wasn’t going to trip over something in the way; he just couldn’t stop to looking at it.

Something about that drove him into far memories of a special place he hadn’t visited since a long time ago, a place he hoped could still be there, along the friends he left behind so long ago. He smiled at the memory of the little town between the woods where everything was possible, and for a moment he wondered if some of that primal weirdness had found its way to the place in which they were now. Definitively, she would like to be there.

_I only you were here with me…_

Finally, he reached the limit point of his march. The enough close to the meteorite to make accurate radiation readings, and the enough far to avoid the annoying interruptions of the news people and the unsettling crowd of noisy people. He put the device over the green floor and kneeled comfortably, and began to extend the many antennae and tiny keyboards stored within the machine. Most important, there was a silver antenna in the middle of the cylinder’s top, he extended very carefully. He turned on the machine, and looked at a little orange screen which told Dipper how much he had to incline the cylinder to give him a proper reading. Dipper got out a little bumping stop at the bottom of the cylinder, adjustable so he could incline it until the orange screen marked Positive Zero.

“Perfect” Dipper told to himself, and pressed the little bottom that began the analysis.

_Ok. Just a minute of this. Maybe two. Where the heck are you, Jay?…_

Suddenly, he heard it; everyone there heard it. Like the rubbing of gigantic river rocks, like the sound of an eggshell cracking, like the murmur of a hungry stomach. Loud, unsettling, the sound coming from the meteorite made everyone there to stop whatever they were doing or going to do and look at it. The background noise, product of hundreds of simultaneous voices, stopped that precise second, and during almost a minute not a single voice was heard in miles.

Dipper darted eyes to the meteorite; something about its shape wasn’t good. Below the rocky appearance, below the crooked features, its shape was inviting, eerily inviting. Inviting to thing that this presume meteorite had to be too light to be so soft in its crash, to be too… organic, to have the shape it had. That wasn’t a rock at all; looking at it and making a little of math, it had an ellipsoidal shape. That has to be something else.

_Wait a moment…_

_CRACK!_

The meteorite began to crack rapidly, speeding fissures running fast over the rocky surface. The crowd of people around it quickly moved several steps back; everyone with the idea that something was about to fall over their heads.

_BIDIBIDIBIDIBIDI…!!_

The animalistic squeal echoed out of the meteorite, in the moment that dense clouds of boiling white steam began to blow powerful out of the meteorite. The steam fell over the grass slowly and almost seductive, covering the crowd as they began to murmur. Far yellings coming from the military personnel indicated Dipper that they had begun to evacuate the people, already covered in the heightening mist. He stood over the floor, not daring to look away. Some familiar sense heighted the hairs on his neck, dried his mouth, and tensed his legs to make him ready to run. It couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be.

Behind the growing mist there were heard the noises of the meteorite cracking even more and collapsing, akin to the demolition of an old bilding, along with brief screams of fear coming from the multitude behind the mist. The houses behind the grass field stopped from being visible, and it was like a piece of cloudy summer day had fused within the grass field. Then, he was there.

A black, gigantic tail of scally, leather-like reflecting skin rose from behind the mist, its spiky thorns at its end rattling in a tempting way. Dipper’s eyeballs opened wide, his worst fear was waking up.

A long neck made its way out of the steam, and a draconic head was seen, while a simultaneous scream was heard coming from inside the whitish steam, its reddish eyes winking and its jaws opening without emit a single sound. A second long-necked head came out from the mist as a second set of terror screams was heard, and then a third one between the other two, this one looking beneath the mist’s level. This head made a couple of angry snorts and roared aloud at the skies, making the entire multitude behind the mist to scream in panic as the beast shrieked wildly.

Dipper stared at the awaking beast with a frown of burning fury, as it proceeded to raise from the floor; his body urged him to run away as fast as he could, but his heart ordered him to stay. Whatever it was coming, sure needed the readings.

Big pieces of rock flew away from the mist, as the silhouette of a gigantic wing appeared from within the mist, and then a second one, launching even more rocks. Dozens of people came out running away, and other dozen of cars ran fast out of the chilling steam, one of them being crushed by a piece of gigantic debris, in front of Dipper’s terrified eyes. But he still kept his muscles from follow his instinct to run.

_Come oooooon baby, almost there!_

The mist dissipated, as the majestic monster waved its enormous wings and stood on its knuckles over the ground, and blue lightning bolts illuminated the skies above them. Dipper kept looking at the creature, recognizing every feature of its body that was urging him so badly to run away. Two long tails, two powerful bat-like wings, and three long necks holding three furious heads. It was there, standing in front of him, against any logic, against any chance. Dipper’s lips quivered; it wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair.

_The One Who is Many…_

The beast lowered its heads to look what remained of the frightened people; some of them running away, some of them lifeless over the floor. The left head moved one of the bodies on the floor with the tip of its snout, and then looked at the center head, nodding with his gums showed aggressively. The three heads rose from the floor level, and their throats began to shine, all three opening their mouths slowly and menacingly.

_No you don’t!_

A massive flash of light blinded him instantly, his hears deafened by a flaring hum. His body felt light, almost like floating, but suddenly he felt the hit of a raspy wall on his back and took his breath away from him. He tried to move his body, but everything he could feel was pain. He tried to blink, but everything on sight was still blank. Only a thing was known for him: his right hand was still holding the cylinder, and his shoulder was hurting more than everything else.

_…Wake up… Wake up…_

A pair of hands lifted his body, and far rumors, every time closer, were heard coming from behind him.

“…Dipper… Dipper!!!” He finally heard Sanjay’s voice right in his ears; he was dragging him. “For God’s sake let that damn thing go!”

“No… We… we…” Dipper tried to say, falling prey of the heaviness of his body.

“No, no no no no no! Dipper stay awake, stay awake!” Sanjay yelled at him. He was feeling a particular hot humidity behind his head. He was bleeding.

“We… We…” Dipper tried to say, when he felt the car seat’s fabric below him, and the device being taken away from his hand. He tried to open his eyes and blink again, but he was feeling terribly tired.

_Screams… Thunder. Car. Shrieks… Know….. Don’ know… San… Sanjay_

“…Sanjay” Dipper murmured knowing he was again on the back seat.

“Dipper? Dipper you’re alive! You can’t know how much you worried me, you idiot!” He heard Sanjay’s voice.

“Jay we… I know A place… safe… safe” Dipper tried to say. All this time he had prepared for this, and know was unable to drive himself where he was supposed to go.

“Dipper I don’t think we –?” Sanjay was about to say, when Dipper heard a horridly noisy explosion coming from the farness, just when the car beneath him shook with in what looked like a sort of expansive wave. “Ok I listen. Just… Just don’t die halfway, ok?”

“Heh, how… how good frieeend…” Dipper said with a brief chuckle.

“Where we go?” Sanjay asked.

“New Jersey… We must go to New Jersey…”


	3. The Things that Get Broken

__

_Death. We feel death coming to us. But Death is not coming for us; is coming for everyone else below us. We can’t prevent it; we won’t prevent it. Life always comes back, We’ve seen it to do it countless times, as by-product of our duty. So, even after the storm, why should we think we bring death to this world even if we kill as much as we can’t prevent?_

_Every moment one squishes lots of tiny microbes, every time, in the outer realms, hordes of Swimmers swam across universes and tear them up. By-product, as much as it cannot be otherwise._

_We made our choice the moment we saw them around us at the moment we felt their fear. The moment, we felt the unbearable madness this realm induced to us. We wanted to live, we wanted to go back with our siblings, and we will do it. Because we have a duty still to accomplish._

_If to get Life back to The Creation is what we can do, kill a single world is a worth price to pay. Things get broken anyway._

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pine trees. All around them over the long, long road to New Jersey, was all they could see. It was the cherry in a cake of suffering, pain and regret, because she couldn’t ignore it for the sake of the mission anymore. Fallen pine trees around steams of smoke in the nearby, in the amidst of a sea of unbearable greenness, that were only inviting to her to think how she screwed everything so badly in so intimate ways, that her whole body was beginning to feel every time more heavy, every time more loathsome. She was aware, perfectly and painfully aware, that this terrible feeling had been only felt by another single person in the entire world, and was all her fault.

The One, the Pine Tree. Her brother.

_Enough of this._

No. She couldn’t keep self-loathing. At least, until they could find Cassie. She looked at Jody, still staring at the road, in search for a little of rest coming of his constant determination, but the intension backfired as fast as her eyesight hit his face. 8 years of marriage had taught her how his face worked; what he felt and how he expressed it every time his face expressed something. What he was expressing in his face, right now, aside her with no one (no one alive at least) around them, was the fly on the cherry.

_No…_

Rage, guilt, sorrow, tiredness, utter regret, and tiny dots of “How idiot I am!”. All mixed in an unbearable expression that was making her fully conscious what her mistakes had done, her… cowardly.

_Oh right! Here we come._

“J… Jody-“

“No” He stammered in low tune. “Just – just don’t” He reassured, lifting one of his hands for a moment, clarifying his painful emphasis, to just after get it back to the steering wheel, holding it tight.

Mabel remained quiet for a moment, and closed her eyes. She deserved it; she had to pass through it. It was her punishment. So she tried again, more eager to face it.

“You can say it” She said quickly, so he hadn’t time to shut her up. Instead, he rolled his eyes in her direction as his chin got hard, and breathed hard as his eyes came back to the road.

“Do you really consider I’m still considering you worth to hear it?” He said in firm, deep voice. She had listened that voice coming from him before. She was sure it was going to hurt.

“I feel you need it” She answered in low tune.

“I won’t make you to feel better, Mabel, I won’t-even-try to do it. So don’t try it” He said again, this time more raspy.

Her eyebrows descended, as her eyes rolled back to the road; now it was not for her… it was for him, he deserved to say it.

“It’s the least I can do” She finally said. Jody whispered, as she clearly glimpsed the moistening of his eyes as his heavy eyebrows lowered as well. He whispered aloud, panting at the moment his eyes darted towards the growing storm clouds above them, towards the blue lightning bolts in the farness. After all, he needed to let it out, to keep himself sane until they could find their daughter.

“You broke us, Mabel” Jody finally said, trying to not tremble his lips in rage. “You just… broke us”.

Yeah, it hurt as much as she thought.

“8 years. 8 f*cking years we spent together being husband and wife. 8 years you made me part of your life, part of Cassie’s life, part of… Dipper’s life. 8 years I thought I was making you happy, that I was happy. 8 years I thought I knew how world was and I was very, Very sure of that. 8 years you made him to bear. And the worst part is that you really didn’t want all of this; you didn’t want a life with me…”

“Jody, I –” She tried to correct, but his words stepped over hers at the moment.

“What?” He interrupted, and then, silence. It was her last chance to say it if it was true, to tell him she felt the same… But she couldn’t do it anymore; he didn’t deserve it. So the seconds passed and passed, and Jody knew. “Yeah, that was I thought” He spoke, passing his hand over his face, cleaning something away from him. “Lock… ehhh, look I know why you did it. You were scared, you wanted to keep Cassie safe, to keep her away from… _that_. And even after all this does to me, after all the _goosebumps_ I feel about it, I… I respect it”

Mabel’s eyes widened. When she thought nothing could be more painful to hear, there was Jody saying _hello again_.

“But even liars have their rules, Mabel. And you broke them all. But… What the heck? Not everyone can be _that_ strong, and even when you…” He said, making a sudden pause. “Even then you made your best to make me happy, despite what you really felt for me” He said, throwing a chuckle “and that’s something I’ll be always thankful for. We were… Very happy, don’t you think?” He said, looking at her with a pity smile. She didn’t hold her grinning response, for a moment both remembering good times as Mabel took his shoulder. “But nothing quits the fact you really don’t love me in that way” Jody reassured, as Mabel slowly got her hand away from his shoulder “and… you can’t just live out of pity, you know?”

“I know” She replied as her smile fade away.

“I forgive you Mabel, I don’t care if is just a apocalypse-like feeling of _what the heck_ but I really, sincerely forgive you” Jody finally said, grinning for a moment “but nothing quits the fact you were coward and our daughter is in danger. And what you did to me to do to him… I’m sorry, but I hope he doesn’t forgive you. He don’t deserve this, as much as neither me”

“I know he won’t” Mabel said back, sniffing aloud.

She had messed up everything so badly, she had crafted The End of the World. And this time, there was no one coming to save them.

The car advanced fiery over the road, passing aside the sign of “Welcome to New Jersey”. Above them, skies were roaring, thunders were sounding, and the Stormbringer was flapping. This time, there were no escapes…


	4. Everything that is Lost

An interesting feeling had been scratching the bottom of Cassie’s stomach as she approached to the city. The sky above her looked way bigger than it was supposed to look. Around the growing eye of the storm, several miles above the ground, a milky veil of light, almost misty in its appearance, made the clouds around the vast territory to look blurred and distant. Almost like a dome made of thin air, it made her to feel like the gravity was just going to turn backwards and push her towards the immensity. And even when she wanted to look away and spare herself from the subtly maddening effect the sole view supposed, very moment she got closer, she could glimpse more clearly how a trail of smoke that heighted over the whitish sky at the edge of the massive storm that the beast had been cultivated all this time since it broke free from its pod. Almost like a knife cutting the blinding whiteness of the sky, it seemed to be bigger and bigger, and Cassie’s mind couldn’t help herself but to think that the size of the cloud of smoke was every time more matching with the size of the whole city she was reaching step by step.

She couldn’t prevent herself to think, that something had gone terribly wrong.

  * _At some place near Boston, New Jersey. Three months ago._



_“Almost there, almost there! Hang up there, Dip!” Sanjay yelled, as he kept his friend, at the edge of the consciousness, with his arm around his own neck as he blurrily pronounced the numbers of the door’s locking screen. Dipper seemed slender, but was indeed a quite heavy, even for Sanjay, who could presume to be in an excellent shape._

_“Th’… Zero eight… O-one five…” Dipper weakly spoke, tangling from fall unconscious… or death. Sanjay was a very skillful man, in almost every shape of human development, but medicine was something he had always trouble to manage, and he had not the least idea about how to help with Dipper’s deep cut on his nape. Blood kept coming out, and Sanjays’s soaked arm was having trouble to keep Dipper’s body from fall to the ground. But he wasn’t going to leave his friend behind, and a noisy screeching coming from the skies just at the moment he typed the last number of the password, made him to know that he hadn’t anymore to help them. Sanjay held Dipper tighter, and pushed fiercely the door at the moment this make the clicking sound that made him to know it was finally unlocked._

_“We’re in, Dipper; just a moment!”_

-

Cassie stood there. Just stood there, not moving a muscle, not blinking, not even breathing nor daring to look away. She just couldn’t give enough credit to what she was seeing to react; raw and distilled fear running wild across her spine.

_No._

She was aside the sign of “Welcome to Boston”, in middle street. At the edge of her feet, and continuing several miles forward, everything was black ashes. Most of the city had been leveled to the ground; buildings crushed, streets ravaged to shapeless gravel, and a slight scent to roasted meat that made her to know about the chance to spot some corpses in the way there.

And yes, she was definitively going to cross that field of death. She had crossed the entire country to find him, and despite everything telling her that it was in vain, she couldn’t just give up. She wasn’t going to leave him behind, no matter if she had the chance or not…

  * _At some place near Boston, New Jersey. Around three months ago._



_Dipper opened his eyelids, trembled and weakly, feeling the weight of a long slumber over him. He instantly spotted the rudimentary lamp tangling from the brownish ceiling, and instantly acknowledged that they had reached his personal refuge on Boston. The corner of his lips moved a little; it was his best possible effort to smile. Memories were coming to him._

_Some years ago (definitively before to meet Sanjay) Dipper used to have a college funding. Same as his Grunkle had done before him, he buried himself in his studies, but this time, he was doing it all out of pure sorrow. One could make oneself an idea of how much hurting the fact that lose the chance of be there to see his own daughter to grow and bear with the fact that he had lost his life mate for good was for him, based in his efforts. Their parents saw it as progress, as his new life, one in which he could be happy; but instead all of that were whippings he made himself just to forget, as much as he could, the pain of not be there for the ones he loved most in this world. At least Mabel was happy, at least Cassie would grow in a normal home, it was all the positive things he could thing._

_Thus when that wasn’t enough to keep him on his feet, he turned very, very paranoid. The enough to use his research funding to travel around the world in search of something. The enough to actually find something. The enough to recognize that it could come back one day and lay waste over the world. And then he came in conclusion that no one was going to believe him, and he had no way to predict when exactly, the unsaid beast of forgotten legends could fall from the stars. And by the time he had returned from his travels, his reputation was enough good to be allowed to see Cassie. And that first moment he saw her, the moment he felt the tears come out from his eyes at the spot of her face, that he knew exactly what he had to do._

_So, he published a lot of uninteresting, strictly academically stuff just to appease the MIT’s authorities and keep his funding, and purchased an old building in the outer territories of Boston, and hired a bunker architect. Then he bought thousands of cans of brown meat among seeds and all kinds of canned food, and medical supply, water, clothes of all sizes, electronic supply for a hundred years and even got an industrial frig and almost a hundred liters of blood of all types, just in case. All of that while he kept publishing around his meteorological research, from which he gained a little of respect. Sure, his service for the MIT was not going to spare him from all of his accumulating debts, and he lost almost everything out of his family’s watch. But at least he had finally a place in case the beast could come in their lifetimes; all for Cassie._

_Sanjay knew nothing about this fortress, and definitively wasn’t questioning himself about the whys, not after what was happening. At least was what Dipper was thinking in the moment Sanjay came through the room’s door._

_“Finally you’re awake, friend” Sanjay said, smiling widely as he walked towards his friend with a cup of coffee on his hand. “For a moment I thought you were already a vegetable”_

_“I hope a nice one” Dipper joked in a raspy tune, trying to get up from the bed, but struggling at the moment. Sanjay quickly put the cup over a side table and approached to him, taking Dipper’s body back to the bed with both hands._

_“Take a moment first, Dip. You were asleep a long time” Sanjay said in a tender tune._

_“How long?” Dipper asked in a hurried tune as his eyes widened in fright._

_“A whole week. Luckily you had a plenty of supply here and enough books to help me to cure yo-“_

_“No. I ha-I have to call Mabel…” Dipper interrupted, trying to get up again, being restrained by Sanjay’s strong arms._

_“Dipper… We can’t receive anymore. We lost signal three days ago; I was talking to my family when the signal cut”_

_“That’s impossible, I bought a good…”_

_“Dip, there is something you need to know. But first I have to know. How did you know?”_

_“Know what?”_

_“You had this place at your dispose, I must think you were expecting something like this to happen. How?”_

_Dipper looked away for a moment. It was not like he wasn’t going to tell Sanjay the truth, he was already the person he trusted most of whom had left in his life. But retelling the whys was going to hurt, a lot. Dipper sighed, and rolled his eyes back to Sanjay._

_“Ok. This is what happened…”_

_-_

Cassie had enough confidence in her knowledge about maps to guide herself across the field of ashes until she could find a surviving spot of the city from which she could guide herself to the bunker’s address, but she was thinking too that maybe a printed paper could be a little difficult to read. Anyway the city was pretty big for itself, and she had never been in Boston before, but having already made her way there, she was not letting that to stop her.

She looked around her surroundings, glimpsing charred silhouettes of tanks and military cars among other military machines whose names she didn’t know, and she was already considering a lot of strange causalities she couldn’t completely figure out. Sure there a big battle had happened, it was the logic thing to conclude, just as logical as it was to infer that it had gone terribly wrong; the beast was still on the sky. But why the monster had made its nest precisely where he had instructed her to go? It couldn’t be coincidence, but it didn’t make sense. Maybe Boston was a special spot, just like Gravity Falls was, and the beast just flew there in a hurry… but a hurry for what?

She needed information. Or at least, it was that what was distracting her from the sight of the dozens of charred corpses that began to appear across the huge field of ashes…

  * _At some place near Boston, New Jersey. Around three months ago._



_“No” Dipper exhaled, when he saw the shade of the beast flapping wildly between the stormy clouds over the city. Fiery, blue lightning bolts revolted around the whirling mist like the shaping of a nightmare, as breezing winds chilled their spines. The One Who is Many had arrived._

_From the roof of the bunker, they could see the gigantic cloud getting every time bigger and bigger over the whole city, a sight that Sanjay had seen to grow serious the days Dipper was comatose._

_“It followed us or… Just came along; I have no idea” Sanjay expressed in dismay. “As soon as it came it formed the cloud. It has been feeding it all of these days”_

_Dipper made some steps backwards as his hands raised to cover his mouth. Sanjay noticed his silence, and turned to watch him. He was astonished as he had only been in other occasion, the day he was notified he couldn’t see his daughter anymore._

_“Dipper?” Sanjay named him, trying to break his trance._

_“The storm. It will grow bigger and bigger until it tears the atmosphere away. It will not stop; it… it cannot stop” Dipper answered with a strange mixture of defeat and fright in his voice. Sanjay couldn’t help himself but to feel slightly disbelieving of his friend’s words. But he had the sight of the beast in front of him, and despite its relatively short size (at least an stadium of wingspan), its storm was right now bigger than the entire city._

_“Why here? Why now?” Sanjay asked, struggling to listen his friend._

_“I told you; it… it wants to go home. Far away from this universe. But if it gets the strength it needs it will kill this world” Dipper replied. “Last time it was here the chosen ones casted it way but… we can’t reunite now. Not the enough fast. Our only chance would be…”_

_Dipper stopped to talk as his hands lowered, and an expression of fierce determination took over his face. Then he began to walk along the place. Sanjay smiled; his clever friend had an idea of what to do._

_“I must guess there’s another option” Sanjay exclaimed._

_“The ancient scrolls talked about a… kind of song. I and Cassie were decoding it when… But I remember the patrons and I can relate them to the radiation signatures we took from the meteor that now I think it was more like a cocoon but it doesn’t matter right now” Dipper railed quickly. “So, if we can decode the main patron we can…”_

_“Cast it away?” Sanjay exclaimed with enthusiasm._

_“More like giving it the quantum push it needs to open a portal to the Nightmare Realm without destroying the atmosphere, but yes. We can cast it away” Dipper said as he finally stopped over a spot, looking at his friend with growing joy. “But we must hurry up. It will not take it much to gain the energy it needs to make the portal”_

_“Count on me, Dip. I got a lot of loved ones here I don’t want to choke to death” Sanjay said, looking at Dipper with braveness._

_“Let’s save the world…”_

_-_

“Something’s going wrong” Mabel said, looking at the sky. The gigantic cloud they had witnessed on the news wasn’t on the sky anymore. Instead, it looked like the sky had turned into gigantic, misty dome from which a ceaseless amount of light came through.

“What?” Jody asked, not letting himself go too much as he tried to ignore the most possible the appearance of the sky as he was driving.

“It is quiet. I imagined something much more… stormy” She inferred.

“How could we know how it is supposed to look like?” Jody questioned, trying to not sound too dismissing. Which emotions were inspiring him to try to be courteous even after what had happened he wasn’t fully sure.

“I don’t know, it is like if…” Mabel tried to articulate. But she couldn’t tell exactly why she suggested it without bring back more hurtful memories, and she had to keep focused in the road. Cassie should be anywhere near, if she had enough trust in her daughter’s will to do things.

A part of her was feeling joy about the possibility of Cassie crossing the entire country in the amidst of an apocalypse. She was strong, as strong as her father, as strong as she used to be as well…

  * _At some place near Boston, New Jersey. Around a month and half ago._



_“Run run run run ruuun!” Sanjay yelled in terror, as both ran over the stairs that led to the entrance of the bunker. Behind them, the bloodiest battle was taking place._

_Early in the morning, a complete regiment came to Boston, weaponized with everything one could imagine to try to kill the creature. Jets, bomber airplanes charged with nuclear warheads, more than a thousand tanks, military cars charging every possible kind of explosive, and so many soldiers as the entire army could be confused as a colony of ants seen from the distance._

_It took them an hour to exhaust all the conventional weaponry._

_Then, the beast got furious. It charged against the armies with its electromagnetic discharges, and a mixture of flying explosives, debris and the creature’s lethal rays quickly wiped out the entire army and as many buildings as one could imagine._

_All the planes, jets and helicopters were destroyed as well, as the beast engulfed them within the stormy clouds…_

_Then the nuclear warhead exploded._

_The beast absorbed the incoming flares within the clouds as well, for a moment making a fire tornado that was seen from space by the cosmonauts that were stranded in the International Space Station due the chaotic climate the beast provoked._

_Then, the things got worse, as the beast absorbed the full amount of the radiation in a sparkly aurora, and the storm’s eye got eight times bigger._

_Dipper and Sanjay had to make their way out of Boston the entire massacre, having gone to the city to warm the army to give them help or at least some help, only to get arrested and having to run on feet when the creature began to fight back and the ordered mass of brave people turned into a cloud of ashes and bones._

_There, just in front of the door, not daring to even glimpse the spectacle that was happening behind them, Dipper fell on knees. Almost hyperventilated, if sprinting out of an entire city wasn’t enough tiring, he was dealing with the fact they weren’t able to save anyone at all. All death, their bodies charred down at the city. He was just staring at the heavy door, watching how green sparks of light illuminated everything around as the creature made that unbearable screeching again. Now they had even less time than before; now they had lost the chance to spare a crowd from an hideous death._

_But they had tried._

_They had tried, and Sanjay knew it, repeating it himself in his mind over and over again, and when he dared to look at his friend in such terrible state, he knew he had to say in high voice._

_“Dipper?” Sanjay shouted, but he didn’t answer. “Dipper!” He yelled again, and Dipper looked at him at last, his chin quivering in rage and impotence. “Dipper we did what we could, do you hear me?” He shouted once more, making his voice to be heard over the ceaseless cacophony of screeching and thunders. He put on knees in front of him and took his cheeks with his hands, making him to raise his face. “We did what we could!”_

_Dipper’s quivering chin finally fell on a strange moan of distress, and he jumped to hug his friend tightly._

_After all, even Sanjay needed it, he embracing his friend as both dared to cry for the bloodshed they had witnessed with impotence and horror._

_There, between the ceaseless rain, the green sparks, the incoming embodiment of death flying over their heads, the friends dared to cry. The time to continue with their last effort to save the world would come after._

_-_

“It is here” Jody said, stopping his car just aside the sign that said “Welcome to Boston”, the car’s tires barely touching the edge of the concrete.

“She – She surely walked in there. We must follow” Mabel reassured.

None of them had hopes to find Cassie anymore, at the sight of the destroyed city. But who could dare to suggest it first?

None of them spoke a single word, none of them could ever suggest that Cassie could have probably died in so many ways before to reach Boston, that their entire trip was just a sort of maddened mourning, having already stolen three cars to get there in one piece, crossing the remnants of unnamed meteorological disasters, all to reach for her.

“Let’s get in, then” Jody dared to speak, pushing the accelerator…

  * _At some place near Boston, New Jersey. Around a month and half ago._



_“Reader Calibrations?” Dipper asked with his Wookie-Talkie. He was over the bunker’s roof, waiting to activate the antennae with his remote. Easily any of them could have done both things, but the interference (none of them knowing if it was because the nuclear explosion nor the natural interference the beast produced) nullified every form of remote they could try; their highly modified wookie-talkies being the only way they figured out to communicate each other._

_“Check” Samjay replied from the other side._

_“Radiation signatures?” Dipper asked again”_

_“They’re in zero. Our Monster Zero could be a great test subject if it wasn’t trying to kill us all” Sanjay joked as he finished the checking of their machine. How they had survived a nuclear blast was as miraculous as the fact nothing around was irradiated; both had their theories about._

_“Focus on the work, Jay. We have only a chance” Dipper reassured with a nervous tune. Having his best friend several miles away in the middle of a field of death wasn’t precisely the most comfortable thing to have in mind._

_“Oh right, oh right. And yep, the recording is also check” Sanjay reassured as well, on knees over the ashy floor. “My pants will thank you to not keeping me over the floor”_

_Dipper panted aloud over the speaker and passed his arm over his face. They were ready._

_“Ok, I’m going to activate the amplifier at the count of 5, 4, 3, 2… 1”_

_Dipper pressed the button, and almost at the same time Sanjay pressed his._

_The signal came through the thinning air towards the eye of the storm._

_The clouds accumulated around the low sky, announcing the coming of the beast, but then it came too close as the clouds dissipated, and its horrific shape flew over the ashy field, straight to Sanjays’s direction._

_“Oh no oh no oh no oh no Sanjay get out of there!” Dipper yelled aloud, trying his most to make him to run, but the creature had already put its knuckles over the floor, just behind Sanjay._

_Sanjay turned around slowly, feeling the darkness of the creature’s shade. Its three pairs of eyes had their attention just on him , the right head startling when Sanjay tried to lower his arm and. “Sanjay? Sanjay?!”_

_“Dipper?”_

_“Oh gosh oh gosh Sanjay get out of –“_

_“It is late. It has its eyes on me”_

_“No no no no we –we we –“_

_“It is late Dipper. We knew this would happen”_

_“No no no no you can’t give up –“_

_“Dipper. It’s ok. I know you can make it. Be strong, please. Be Strong. Goodbye, Dipper Pines, I go in peace” Dipper heard coming from the Wookie-talkie with his hand shaking._

__

_Sanjay turned his back to the beast, smiling a last time, as its throats began to shine…_

_Dipper just saw how the spot illuminated, and a second later the Wookie-talkie emitted a horrid sound, and the beast flew away flapping its enormous and heavy wings, back to the whitish skies. Dipper’s wookie-talkie fell from his hand, as he fell on knees as well over the stony floor of the roof. Sanjay had gone._

__

_-_

Cassie stood still in the middle of the ashy field, not even having to begin to look for her map as she had planned with so much efforts. Her hands were holding the straps of her backpack so tightly she knew despite not looking at them, that those were red. She could not say a word, neither him, being on knees giving his back to her. She had just found him, crying in front of an eerily shaped bunch of ashes, and he had just heard her steps behind him. So he stopped, to make himself sure he was not hallucinating when he swore in his mind he was hearing her breaths. 

But he couldn’t look behind him, and she couldn’t say a single word. Both were paralyzed bellow the weight of so many things to say, so many things to forgive and be forgiven, so many hugs to give.

So he was the one who dared to put on his feet and turn around.

He saw her face, and she saw his face. The weight of the emotions got even more intense between them. Not even the frightening sky above their heads nor the black death-like terrain below their shoes existed anymore; just she and he, at scarce feet one from the other.

Cassie gulped, and finally let herself to let the weight of the moment to fall over her hearth.

“UncleDip?”

Faster than the eyes could see, they ran one towards the other, and their bodies melted together in the most strong and fulfilling hug that a pair of souls could have ever shared.

They were together at last, alive and well, as much as the growing wetness on their shirts’ testified their sorrow.

They were together at last, to be witnesses of the end.


	5. Death and Love

Quietness. Everything around was too quiet to feel real. The featureless sky, shiny and powerfully maddening, stood over their heads like a door waiting to be opened and unveil horrors beyond the strength of a mere mortal to hold it. Besides a soft, almost subtle breeze, nothing could be heard around miles of dead, silent terrains. From the privileged view of the bunker’s roof, one could be ready to stare powerless at the beginning of the end.

So they were there; father and daughter. They were in front of the roof’s parapet, their hands over the cold metal, their eyes put on the frightful skies. A long ago they had said what they had to say, know what they had to know, and now they were in peace. Or, at least, the most in peace a couple of stranded ones at the doors of the Apocalypse could be.

It took a plenty of time to convince Cassie that he had done everything in his power to try to stop the beast, but without important pieces of data that she used to have, and most of the tech he and Sanjay had used already destroyed or overused in failed experiments, they had nothing to transmit within nothing to use.

Of course, she couldn’t give up; that was her nature. So, despite being in peace, she was still waiting for a miracle, a _deus ex machina,_ a cliffhanger for their story to not be done yet. She had been told about the stories of their parents, and she hoped that this time, something could come at the eleventh hour.

Something.

Whatever.

In any time.

Yep, she was still waiting.

She had her shoulders surrounded by the arm of Dipper since a pair of minutes, but she hadn’t noticed yet, and he was still waiting for her to make a response and say what was troubling her most among the lots of things surely she had to be thinking in that unnerving silence.

“What happens?” He finally got enough braveness to ask. She sighed slowly, and her eyes rolled away.

“Mom and… and Dad. I just ran away without say a word. I wonder where they are or if they’re looking for me or if they…” She began to answer, just to stop at the last moment. She had not enough strength to say it.

“I know her. She couldn’t ever give up. Believe me, we made it alive of things we couldn’t ever begin to describe, Cass; she’s surely on her way here”

“She left you behind; why wouldn’t she do the same to me?” Cassie said in a lamenting tune. That definitively caught him off guard, right in all the pain he had been holding all those years. He remained silent for a moment; even after all that had happened, all the fault she had in all of that, he wasn’t the enough bitter to speak a single word against her.

“That was… that was something completely different, Cass. She loves you more than anything in this world or any other” he said as he recharged his head over hers. “I could bet she will be right here in any moment… And Jody too! He had been this kinda protective father all this years, hadn’t he?” Dipper reassured with a confident expression.

“Yeah, he had been” Cassie replied with a smile. If the world wasn’t coming to an end right then, she was sure she would be thinking in the now infinite possibilities of have two fathers now Jodie definitively had to know Dipper wasn’t a crazed creep after all this time. But not now. Now it was the time to wait for something to save them.

Any moment.

_Aaaaaany moment_ _♪._

_Whenever you waaant_ _♪…_

“Dipper?”

Both heard the voice, coming from behind them, from a decent distance. The squealing tune, undoubtedly her voice, was calling for him. Cassie and Dipper froze in place, each one restrained from any reaction by their unique set of emotions and the feedback of feel the other’s body to react in the same way. Dipper breathed over Cassie’s hair and kissed the top of her head, and she knew they could turn around at the same time to face the fact of who was standing behind them.

Then their eyes met.

“Mom!” Cassie shouted at the moment, and ran towards Mabel’s strong arms.

“Cassie!” She replied in the moment she hugged her, kissing her head repeatedly as cried and laughed, happy to be reunited despite all the things they had yet to resolve. “Don’t ever do that again! Never. Ever again!”

Between the kisses and the fabric of Mabel’s sweater, she glimpsed Jody. He instantly noticed, and quickly incorporated within the family hug.

They were together again, at last, at the end of everything.

Dipper stared at them. He was the most possible near to be in peace with his sorrow, and for a moment, his mind drove him to an unforgivable place. For a moment he wondered how their life could have been if Mabel had never met Jody, if they could’ve been enough strong and stay together no matter what, no matter how; if only their parents hadn’t achieved their goal to separate them, if Dipper could’ve had the chance to be a father to Cassie.

For a moment he wondered about a life he was never meant to have.

But then the family hug ended, Cassie in Jody’s arms, Mabel alone along them. Jody looked at his surrogate daughter with a solemn expression, and Cassie got aware of what was happening. It was going to hurt.

Mabel made a couple of steps forward, an Dipper looked around her eyes.

That glance, the one that was forbidden to hope for, the one that only could mean something. It was part guilt, part relief, part sorrow and part…

_No. It can’t be._

Mabel’s lips quivered as she tried to make another step forward, but her feet didn’t respond. How to explain that all his suffering, the fate of the world, that everything was for absolutely nothing at all? No one, dead or alive who had ever had walked upon that world could ever have the half of the forces she needed right now to say it. And Dipper hadn’t nothing to bear with it, except what he saw next.

_What?_

He looked at Jody.

His features were undoubtedly obvious. It was guilt what he was feeling. After all, he had been the conspirator; part of the end of the world was for him. But how to blame him for think the things he thought that moment? How to make him to bear the horror of such knowledge for himself?

He didn’t.

Dipper’s eyes rolled back at Mabel. She had made the step forward, and she was still looking at him like that. As if the explanation of how they managed to reach Boston despite the armies and the chaos and the endless storm suddenly lost any significance. More than the how, it was the why. Because Mabel’s urges to be where she was weren’t only ‘cause of Cassie’s wellbeing. She had to face the undeniable, now more than ever. She had to ask for forgiveness.

_What is this? It – it cannot be stop playing with me!!_

“Dipper…” She said again.

_Say ‘thank you’ and go away say ‘thank you’ and go away say ‘thank you’ and go away…!_

“Dipper I –“

“No” He interrupted, hard and rude.

She raised a hand, as if she was going to stammer something, and he frowned in disbelief, his lungs filled in thin air.

“NO!” He shouted at her, and she lowered her arm quickly. “You – you can’t do this right now you simply can’t f*cking do it!” He yelled aloud. “Look around you Mabel, hadn’t you got aware what you did?!.. It’s over! There is nothing to left. Sanjay is dead. The world is going to end anytime. You don’t have the slightest idea of how much have you caused, how much _pain_ have you caused! You…”

Dipper stopped. He couldn’t do it, he just couldn’t do it.

“Why?” He finally asked. As if the fact that his sister’s actions drove the destruction of Earth suddenly lost significance, the only that mattered now was a _why_ , the only he needed to listen.

“Why what?” She replied, unsure if she was going to be yelled further about the coming of the storm, or about something else.

“Why you did it?” He finally asked. “I gave up everything Mabel, all for you, just because I thought was that what you wanted!”

She just rolled her eyes away. She couldn’t do it.

“I gave up everything! Why had you to _take_ her away too?! Why?!..”

He fell on his knees, hugging his stomach.

“Why can’t I hate you? I want and I can’t hate you” He shouted, as his eyes dropped watery streams of agony and a far screeching was heard in the sky.

Mabel made all the steps she needed to reach him in less than she reasoned she did it, and she fell on knees to in front of him.

“Dipper…” She tried to speak. All the guilt, all the pain she couldn’t bear with, right in front of her, the one she had betrayed… the one she loved.

He raised his head, and she knew what she was going to do.

And then, she pressed her lips against his, and giving up at last, tired from the pain and the sorrow, he answered pushing his face forward.

Without any hope remaining, without any chance left, without anything to give or take, he forgave her. Thus their lips, long ago separated, joined together again, just in time for the end.

Mabel got her lips apart from Dipper’s, and hugged him tightly. Finally, she was there for him, and she was not going to let him go ever again.

“I would’ve give up everything to having been there for you!” She tearfully said.

“I know. I love you” Dipper said back, wrapping her within his arms.

_BIDIBIDIBIDIBDI!!!..._

The storm grew bigger, as from every corner of the Earth the clouds bent on the direction of the gigantic wall of steam.

And then, the wind.

Like if it was being sicked away, the air of every corner of the world blew away towards a single point. The trees were taken from the floor, the mountains were chiseled away, every human construction ever built crumbled in thin air, the seas revolted against the land masses in a biblical outburst. And what else the living beings could do if not let themselves go?

The whole atmosphere crooked like a transparent blanket, and an unholy gate announced its presence within purplish waves of steam, right over the world’s shiny face.

The mighty Storm Bringer flew away the world it was ruining, and crossed the gate back to the heavens it has missed since a long time ago. There, at the edge of the Eternity, it listened at familiar screechings coming from the vastness.

It was being called…

  * Outpost 618-Z, Edge of the Imperial Council’s Influence Zone; Dimension 0 (The Nightmare Realm)



“Check!” Gargoybel pronounced triumphant, as her wings expanded in awe and a malefiscent grin took over her face. It was her third check mate.

“If more horse stealing was allowed…” Ood Mabel replied, lifting her hindbrain with an unamused expression of _‘you’re cheating again’_.

“Why you have to raise that thing every time you speak?” Gargoybel asked with a little of disdain.

“We oods speak with our minds, sis” Ood Mabel replied with an equally disdained expression. “It is the fifth time I tell you”

“I know I know. Sorry is just that weeeeeell most of Mabels I know are earthlings and seeing you carrying a brain coming out from your mouth is like a _whaaaaa_ ” Gargoybel finally admitted. “Sorry, sis. I don’t want to sound rude, I just need time”

But instead of getting angry, Ood Mabel smirked (or at least the ood equivalent).

“Don’t worry, sis. I understand. I met once a molecularly-unstable Mabel and it was pretty hard to look at it. Maybe I can show you a little of my home, wee oods greet each other with snaps of what we have seen” Ood Mabel offered, extending her hand sustaining her hindbrain.

“Do you mean I must…” Gargoybel asked with a tune of unsureness “I’m not gonna break it or something? I mean I have claws on my hands aaaand I don’t want to hurt you”

“Don’t worry sis, it is stronger than it looks; I tend to squish it when I roll on my sleep” Ood Mabel replied with a brief laugh. Gargoybel smiled back; maybe this newly met Mabel could make a good friend…

_BIDIBIDIBIDIBDI!!!..._

The whole place shook, and both Mabels stood over the table, running straight to the room’s window. Both looked incredulously how the massive, dark black beast crossed their sight, and they rolled their eyes to look each other. This was bad, very very bad.

“Is that the kind of stuff we must report?” Gargoybel asked.

“Yep, that is just the kind of things we must report” Ood Mabel answered.

There, in the vastness, the Storm Bringer was finally free. Free, and awaiting. Something was calling for it, something familiar…

_THE END_


End file.
